Falling Back
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When my kids were little, we had an exercise at home that I’ll never forget. My parents have a bungalow upstate with a jungle gym that’s probably over a hundred years old—but to me, it’s the best jungle gym in the world because I grew up on it.
Every time my children turned five or six, we would do a special exercise on it. They would climb up the jungle gym—or the ladder—and then, instead of carefully walking across, they had to get halfway up, close their eyes, and fall backward into my arms.
At first, they were terrified.
“Daddy, are you sure?”
I’d reassure them, “Just close your eyes. I’ve got you. Don’t worry—if I drop you, your mother’s going to kill me, so it’s in my interest to catch you.”
Slowly, hesitantly, they would climb halfway. Some would freeze. Some would wobble. But at some point, they would trust me and fall backward. And every single time, I caught them.
Then something beautiful happened: once they had fallen and been caught just once, they would immediately climb back up, eager to do it again.
The lesson is simple but profound: when you allow yourself to fall, to surrender, to trust, you find courage you didn’t know you had.
As soon as you stop trying to control everything, stop trying to predict the future, and instead say, “I don’t know what’s coming, but I trust You, Hashem,” you begin to fall back into His arms.
No matter what challenges life throws at you—walls, obstacles, difficulties—when you let go and trust, you are caught. And there is nothing more freeing, nothing more beautiful, than walking through life falling backward into the arms of Hashem.